My parents have a beautiful cherry and mahogany upright, grand player piano in our living room, and I learned to play it when I was five years old. Before that, I would listen to the Steinway soundboard play the perforated, paper piano rolls my dad played; my mom recorded hours of me dancing around the living room to "Under the Sea," the "Tarantella," and hundreds of other varied musical numbers. It must have been these songs that inspired me to tell my parents that I wanted to learn to play those songs. And so, my piano lessons began.
I never learned how to play the "Tarantella," but by the time I stopped taking lessons, I could play pieces by Chopin and Mozart and Bach by heart. I memorized the notes as I practiced them; if I messed up a note, I began playing the piece from the very, very beginning. I went from tentatively pressing down the keys to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" to the more complicated "Down by the Bay," and I even managed to coerce my piano teacher into playing Bach’s "Prelude in C" when I was 10 years old. The only thing that I hated about playing the piano was practicing; all I wanted (and still want) was to be able to sit on the blue velvet-covered piano bench and be able to play whatever I desired. I never wanted to sit down and learn. My mom had to put a timer in front of me that would count down from 30 minutes and I had to play for all 30. When I left the “Piano Adventures” series of piano books and graduated on to the more serious books that were filled with sonatas, nocturnes and waltzes, my practice time went up from half an hour to an entire hour. One full hour: 60 minutes. Too long.
I never did well at piano recitals. My irrational fear of public speaking has also manifested itself into an irrational fear of performing in front of people. Before every piano recital, I would cry in the bathroom and try everything in my power to not perform. It was no use. Every time I went on stage anyways, my eyes were still red and puffy from breakdowns just moments before.
Everything changed when I went to high school; I started rowing. Anyone who rows knows about the time commitment. I would leave directly from school for practice, and most days I would go directly home from practice to eat and do my homework. By the time that was finished, it would be late and I would go to bed. There was no time for piano, and my lessons stopped. The piano gathered dust.
Every time I walk past the piano, a little part of my heart stirs and my fingers begin to itch. In the five years it’s been since I’ve had a piano lesson, I’ve played the piano a grand total of six times. Each time I would find myself unable to recall a song from memory (usually the piano cliché, "Fur Elise") but after a few minutes of sitting in front of the sheet music, it would return to me.
Playing the piano is like riding a bike; you leave it for a few days, months or even years but when you return, you still know how to play. It may take a few tries and a few mishaps but, in the end, it’s like you never stopped playing.
